TechnoLawyer: Litigation/Discovery/Trials

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers cloud ediscovery software with new near-duplicate document processing technology (see article below), a new twist on cable management, legal proofreading software that you can train, and an iOS app for creating time-lapse videos. Don't miss the next issue.

GROUP "LIKE" DISCOVERY DOCUMENTS TO EXPEDITE YOUR REVIEW

If you're like most lawyers, the documents you create go through multiple rounds of drafts. And you probably have email conversations with threads that would kill a few trees if printed. You're not the only the one who generates these so-called "near duplicates." Documents nearly but not exactly the same have become an expensive problem in ediscovery.

Lexbe eDiscovery Platform … in One Sentence

Launched this week, Lexbe eDiscovery Platform, a cloud application for processing, culling, reviewing and producing electronically stored information (ESI), now includes near duplicate grouping technology called NearDup Groupings+.

The Killer Feature

NearDup Groupings+ takes advantage of specialized servers in Lexbe's datacenter, enabling it to scale to handle cases of any size. It "runs quickly" according to the company, giving it a speed advantage over on-premise software running on a single PC or even a small cluster.

NearDup Groupings+ also speeds up the review process while minimizing risks. Grouping similar documents in a collection of ESI facilitates accelerated batch issue coding. Of course, NearDup Groupings+ doesn't only group similar responsive documents, but also similar privileged documents. This makes it less likely you'll inadvertently disclose such documents, a growing problem thanks to the volume of email, attachments, and other ESI even in small cases.

Speaking of email, it has long posed a challenge for near-duplication software not to mention mighty Gmail. Conversations involving some of the same people but on different topics often mistakenly get grouped together. NearDup Grouping+ looks beyond the sender, recipients, and subject line to group email messages more intelligently — like a human being. With more confidence in the near duplicate groupings, you can review email threads more quickly.

Other Notable Features

Lexbe eDiscovery Platform supports documents in their native format and Outlook PST files. You can also load documents in PDF or TIFF formats; it automatically processes and performs OCR on scanned documents. Bates stamping can occur at the document level for native files and on each page for PDF and TIFF files, providing for flexible review and productions.

A Google-like search interface facilitates Boolean keyword searches. Lexbe eDiscovery Platform also features more advanced tools such as concept, stemming (derivatives of root words), and fuzzy searches. Saved searches automatically include newly added documents. You'll find a standard set of issue tags, but you can also create your own custom tags.

Administrative controls enable you to automatically assign documents to reviewers for "load-balanced" reviews. Review progress reporting helps you stay on top of staffing and production deadlines. Lexbe eDiscovery Platform produces documents in whatever format you agree upon with opposing counsel (e.g., Native, PDF, or TIFF load files).

What Else Should You Know?

Lexbe eDiscovery Platform costs $22 per GB per month regardless of the number of cases and users (discounts exist for customers with large cases and/or many accounts). This price includes NearDup Groupings+. However, the latter is also available as a standalone service. When used in this manner, Lexbe delivers near duplicate load files for other popular document review products. Learn more about Lexbe eDiscovery Platform.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: Microsoft Word's table of authorities tool can make a grown litigator or paralegal cry so we asked Word trainer and Legal Office Guru publisher Deborah Savadra to round up the leading third-party Word add-ons for generating tables of authorities. In addition to describing the functionality of each, Deborah provides three tips on how to make the best choice for your law firm. Happier brief drafting lies ahead so dry your eyes. Also, don't miss the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week for a look at new voir dire tactics.

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. LitigationWorld also features in-depth litigation product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings, as well as links to the most noteworthy litigation articles in other publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 67 articles from the past two weeks worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week.

Supreme Court Haiku

Discovery Lessons From Your Mother

Courtroom Technology in Rural Kentucky

Privilege Not Waived on Purchased Computer

Congratulations to Thomas M. O’Toole of Sound Jury Blog on winning our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award: Trial Strategies That Most Litigators Don't Know About

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. You'll also receive in-depth litigation product reviews as well as links to the most noteworthy articles in other online litigation publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers software that adds legal research and litigation drafting tools to Microsoft Office via the Ribbon (see article below), a scanner rental service, an iPhone time management app, and a cloud practice management system for litigation. Don't miss the next issue.

GIVE MICROSOFT WORD AND OUTLOOK A LAW DEGREE

Microsoft Word and Outlook don't realize you're a lawyer. That's too bad because you spend so much time using these iconic software products. Your usage generates a wealth of data about your cases in the documents you create and the email messages you send and receive. Realizing this, LexisNexis teamed up with Microsoft to help you leverage this data to automate many common tasks.

Lexis for Microsoft Office 4.2 … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Lexis for Microsoft Office 4.2 adds legal research tools to Microsoft Word and Outlook and litigation drafting tools to Microsoft Word.

The Killer Feature

An email message arrives with an attached brief from opposing counsel. You need copies of all the cases and other source materials cited in the brief. Time for a ton of manual labor, right?

Not with the new version of Lexis for Microsoft Office, which adds a button called "Get Cited Docs" to Word's Ribbon. Clicking the button taps into your Lexis Advance account and places all the cited documents into a virtual stack. In addition to reading these materials on your PC, you can print and/or email them (PDF format). You can also apply filters such as displaying negative treatment from Shepard's to start your own research.

Get Cited Docs works with Word and PDF documents. In the latter case, technology from Nuance converts the PDF document into Word format on-the-fly. A document need not arrive as an email attachment. Get Cited Docs can import and then work its magic on any Word or PDF document with citations.

Other Notable Features

Lexis for Microsoft Office also assists you when writing. For example, Check Cite Format checks your citations against the Bluebook, California, or New York rules. It shows your citations in context and suggests corrections, essentially acting like a spell checker. It also updates "Id" citations.

As its name suggests, Check Quotes compares quotes in your document to the source material in Lexis Advance. When it finds a difference, it shows you the original in context and offers you a suggested correction. It works with block quotes and understands brackets and ellipses.

After cleaning up your document with Check Cite Format and Check Quotes, Prepare TOA automates the creation of a table of authorities that it validates against Lexis Advance. Options include adding, editing, and moving headings, separating cases and statutes, separating federal and state sources, and placing party names on separate lines. You can update the table of authorities as often as necessary.

Lexis for Microsoft Office also adds functionality to Outlook by highlighting keywords such as citations, companies, judges, lawyers, etc. Clicking on a highlighted item displays the corresponding court opinion, etc. from Lexis Advance. You can also display search results from Bing and Google as well as run citations through Shepard's.

What Else Should You Know?

Lexis for Microsoft Office works with Microsoft Office 2007, 2010, and 2013. It requires a Lexis Advance subscription. Learn more about Lexis for Microsoft Office 4.2.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: The State Bar of California has proposed that litigators should learn the ediscovery ropes, hire a consultant, or no longer accept cases involving email and other electronic documents. Because other states often follow California's lead, ediscovery expert Joshua Gilliland analyzes the proposed ethics opinion in this issue of LitigationWorld. Also, don't miss the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week for examples of the state of the art in trial graphics and presentations.

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. LitigationWorld also features in-depth litigation product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings, as well as links to the most noteworthy litigation articles in other publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an ediscovery processing service that may set new speed records (see article below), a cloud practice management system that integrates with Outlook, a secure file sharing service that organizes documents by people, and a secure group messaging service. Don't miss the next issue.

EDISCOVERY PROCESSING THAT SCALES WITH YOUR NEEDS

When some of you of a certain age started working as a young litigator, "processing" involved nothing more than having boxes of dusty documents copied. You would then review the copies. Processing electronically stored information (ESI) is much more complex not only because of the many document formats and garbage files but also the sheer volume. In short, you need both quality and speed.

Lexbe Native Processing+ (TIFF) … in One Sentence

Launching today, Lexbe Native Processing+ (TIFF) eliminates duplicates and other irrelevant documents from ESI, and converts the remaining documents into a TIFF-based load file.

The Killer Feature

According to Lexbe, its new service is among the fastest. How fast? The company reported in a white paper that the new service processed the famous 53 GB Enron data set into TIFF images in 5.3 hours. In one day, Lexbe Native Processing+ can handle more than 240 GB of ESI or about 23 million pages.

Lexbe's fast processing enables you to start your document reviews sooner, and meet tight discovery deadlines even as the volume of ESI continues to grow. Because your clients' ESI spends less time being processed, Lexbe Native Processing+ also costs less than the going rate for processing.

Other Notable Features

Lexbe Native Processing+ (TIFF) achieves its speed advantage thanks to proprietary processing software that works across multiple servers. Lexbe can provision as many servers as your job needs depending on its size and your deadline.

By contrast, law firms and legal departments that use desktop processing software internally can't add more PCs easily. You need a data center, and specialty software for this kind of scale. Processing also requires trained personnel to apply various filters such as de-duplication. Even the largest law firms usually have a relatively small team of litigation project managers and technicians.

As a result, a 200 GB job at a law firm or legal department could take weeks or more using 100% of available resources. Lexbe could finish this job in just days.

Lexbe transmits and stores the ESI you provide using 256-bit encryption. The company's data centers reside in the United States, and meet all the latest security standards such as SSAE 16 and ISAE 3042. Additionally, Lexbe has achieved ISO 27001 certification and validation as a Level 1 Service Provider under the PCI Data Security Standard.

What Else Should You Know?

You can use the TIFF-based load file created by Lexbe Native Processing+ in any discovery review software, including Lexbe's eponymous cloud application. Learn more about Lexbe Native Processing+ (TIFF).

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 73 articles from the past two weeks worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week.

Wisdom From 50+ Years of Litigation Practice

A Proposed Timeline for the Year Before Trial

Review: TDNotebook

Web Page Held Not Self-Authenticating

Congratulations to Robert J. Ambrogi of Robert Ambrogi's LawSites on winning our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award: Review of Wellsettled

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. You'll also receive in-depth litigation product reviews as well as links to the most noteworthy articles in other online litigation publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: "We hold these truths to be self-evident" may have sufficed for the Declaration of Independence but trials require more proof. Because showing while telling is more persuasive, trial presentation software has gone from luxury to requirement. In this issue of LitigationWorld, litigation consultant Brett Burney reviews TrialDirector 6.5, especially its focus on user experience and its integration with TrialDirector for iPad and TDNoteBook. Also, don't miss the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week for nine tips on how to ace video depositions.

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. LitigationWorld also features in-depth litigation product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings, as well as links to the most noteworthy litigation articles in other publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to LitigationWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 52 articles from the past two weeks worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week.

Weird Al's "Word Crimes" (Video)

To Bifurcate or Not to Bifurcate Damages?

Eliminate Paper Exhibits From Depositions

Major Legal Research Overhauls in the Works

Congratulations to Bill Latham of The Hytech Lawyer on winning our LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award: Litigation Budget Excel Spreadsheet Template

How to Receive LitigationWorld
All practice areas evolve, but none faster than litigation. Written by successful litigators and other litigation experts, LitigationWorld provides you with practical tips related to electronic discovery, depositions, litigation strategy, litigation technology, and trial presentations. You'll also receive in-depth litigation product reviews as well as links to the most noteworthy articles in other online litigation publications so that you'll never miss anything. The LitigationWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to SmallLaw: Stephen Babcock of Babcock Partners doesn't hew to stereotypes. His small litigation boutique competes against large law firms both for clients and in the courtroom. In this issue of SmallLaw, lawyer and journalist Marin Feldman profiles this Louisiana law firm and its founder. You'll learn how Babcock gained complex litigation experience directly out of law school, why his firm has invested more than $150,000 in technology (including the products purchased), and his secrets to success. Also, don't miss the SmallLaw Pick of the Week to learn how to obtain mainstream media coverage for yourself and your law firm.

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Written by practicing lawyers who manage successful small firms and legal technology and practice management experts who have achieved rock star status, SmallLaw provides practical advice on management, marketing, and technology issues in small law firms, as well as comprehensive legal product reviews with accompanying TechnoScore ratings. SmallLaw also ensures that you won't miss anything published elsewhere by linking to helpful articles (and podcasts and videos) about solo practices and small law firms. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.